Tech Five: Twitter smashes records, Gigamon falls

How will the World Cup play on Wall Street today? Twitter's records, tweet-wise, were smashed during Germany's pummeling Tuesday of Brazil in a semi-final match. Also, Gigamon's stock plunged Wednesday morning. Here's a look at five tech stocks to watch:

Twitter. A record 35.6 million tweets were sent during the 92-minute game in which Germany trounced Brazil 7-1, amounting to about 6,449 tweets every second during play, according to Bleacher Report. The game has become the most discussed sports event ever on the social media giant. It also broke the tweets-per-minute record, when the fifth goal triggered 580,601 in one minute. The company's shares were up slightly, less than 1%, in pre-market trading Wednesday.^[1]

Gigamon. Shares of Gigamon, which provides network traffic control products, tumbled more than 32% Wednesday morning to $12.26 in pre-market trading following downgrades of its stocks. Analysts at Goldman Sachs downgraded it from "buy" to "neutral," lowering its target price from $29 to $14. Also, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch downgraded it from "neutral" to "underperform" with a price target of $11. Analyst Tal Liani said the company's second-quarter negative pre-announcement was the second in a row for Gigamon, reports StreetInsider. The company's shares have fallen ^[2]44% over the past 52 weeks.

Samsung. The electronics giant's second-quarter operating income fell^[3] to a two-year low partly because of falling demand for smartphones in China. In an earnings preview Tuesday, the South Korean company said its operating income was 7.2 trillion won or $7.1 billion for the three months ending June 30. Its quarterly profit, a 24% drop from the previous year, is below analysts' expectations of about 8 trillion won. Still, the company has some cool stuff coming. The first picture of its rumored virtual reality headset, called Gear VR, has leaked and it appears that users will be able to slide a Galaxy phone into the front, reports Business Insider.^[4]

Amazon. The retail giant is offering authors mired in its dispute with Hachette Book Group all proceeds from the sale of any digital book^[5], reports Bloomberg. In a letter to authors, it proposed bypassing the publishes and going directly to writers, according to an interview with Douglas Preston, co-author of the Pendergast series of books. Preston led an effort to press Amazon to end the dispute.

Garmin. The GPS products maker was downgraded^[6] to "underperform" from "sector perform" at Pacific Crest because of potential challenges in coming months, reports CNBC. One of those challenges is Apple's expected introduction of an 'iWatch" product.

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